Seasons

Episodes

Production Information

Original Run

Release Time

Running Time

~4 minutes

Status

Unknown

RWBY Chibi is an American animated web series and spin-off of RWBY produced by Rooster Teeth Productions. The show features stylized "chibi" versions of RWBY characters and focuses on lighthearted comedy rather than plot and drama.

Contents

Summary

Each episode of RWBY Chibi is around 4 minutes long and consists of several lighthearted self-contained comedy shorts (or segments) with little to no overarching storyline, though there are multiple recurring themes and running gags throughout the series. Individual shorts range from a few seconds to a few minutes in length.

RWBY Chibi is non-canon to the continuity of the main show.[1] According to Gray Haddock, it is meant to be a spin-off series for younger audiences after RWBY became too mature.[2]

Release

The show was first announced as part of Rooster Teeth's 13th Anniversary celebrations on April 1st, 2016.[3] Sneak peeks of the show were shown as extra content at RWBY Tugg screenings on April 27th, 2016.[4]

The first episode premiered on May 7th, 2016 as part of Rooster Teeth's "Summer of Animation", alongside Camp Camp and Red vs. Blue Season 14.[5] Like RWBY, episodes are released weekly, airing on Saturdays for Rooster Teeth sponsors and the following day for registered users of the site. Episodes are also uploaded to YouTube the week following the sponsor release.

RWBY Chibi ran weekly until the start of RWBY Volume 4,[4] which premiered on October 22nd, 2016 (totalling 24 episodes).

On January 23rd, 2017 a new season of RWBY Chibi was announced, set to be released for May 2017.[6]

On May 3rd, 2017, Rooster Teeth released a trailer and revealed the Season 2 premiere would be on May 13th, 2017.[7]

An exclusive trailer of Season 2 was posted on Entertainment Weekly on May 10th, 2017. [8]

On January 16th, 2018, it was confirmed that the third season of RWBY Chibi would start airing on January 27th, 2018.[9] Just before the eighth episode on March 17th, director Paula Decanini confirmed that the show would enter a midseason break until June.[10]

Rooster Teeth later revealed that the series would return on June 30th, 2018.
[11]

The third season abruptly ended after its 16th episode aired on August 18, 2018. Rooster Teeth then announced that that was considered the season finale, which makes Season 3 have a shortage of episodes with it having only 16 than the regular 24 per season.

It is unknown at this time if RWBY Chibi will continue for a fourth season since the season three finale on August 18, 2018, although RT Animation's restructuring and focus on producing volumes for the main series suggests that the spin-off is not an immediate priority.

Development

Original ideas for shorts stemmed from collaborative pitching sessions, where various Rooster Teeth staff members were invited to share ideas and jokes that could be further developed into shorts.[12] Some shorts were also based directly on fan-comics, with the original artists given writing and story credits on the final episode.[13] Shorts each have their own titles and are worked on by individual teams.

Chibi Ruby's character design, by Mojojoj

The character designs for the show were created with help from Hajime "Mojojoj" Nakamura, a Japanese fan artist well known in the RWBY fan community for his fanart. He was contacted by Rooster Teeth and the designs he provided were later used as references for creating the 3D models used in the show itself.

The show is animated in 3D in the program Autodesk Maya, unlike previous volumes of RWBY, which were animated in Smith Micro'sPoser.[14] Unlike the main series, RWBY Chibi does not use motion capture.

The show is divided into segments, not episodes, and animators were also given much more creative freedom than on the main show, as shorts are less closely storyboarded, allowing them to get their own intuitive feel for the comedic timing of the shorts.[12] Chibi has also been described as a testing ground for animation techniques, new tools, the maya pipeline, and the workings of the crew.[15]

The animation team working on the spin-off show is separate to the team that was working on Volume 4 of RWBY.[16] Animation for the first season of RWBY Chibi wrapped on September 16th, 2016.[17]

Soundtrack

Jeff Williams and Alex Abraham, who compose the music for the main series, also worked on music for RWBY Chibi. The music includes remixes and rearrangements of songs from the RWBY soundtrack in a variety of styles, including 8-bit versions, as well as new compositions.[18]Casey Lee Williams contributed vocals.

Alex Abraham had uploaded some tracks from the soundtrack to his SoundCloud for free public streaming.

Season 3

Unknown Season

The characters of RWBY Chibi are noted as having slightly different personas to their counterparts from RWBY. For example, Miles Luna says that chibi Jaune is more "angry and feminine" than his canon incarnation, while chibi Ruby is "kind of a little shit".[19]Michael Jones has described chibi Sun as "dumb as a brick" while his canon counterpart is positive and encouraging.[20] There are more objective differences as well, the most noticeable being Neo Politan constantly "speaking" in signs materialized from nowhere, a trait seen nowhere in canon; also, unlike in the series proper, Pyrrha makes no attempt to hide her Semblance, nor Blake with her Faunus ears, despite habitually wearing the bow she wore to hide them in the first three volumes.

Most characters have one or more unique screen wipes that transition between scenes in an episode. Each wipe matches the character's personality and theme. For example, Ren's takes the shape of a yin-yang symbol while Zwei's wipe takes the shape of dog bones.